Was Iraq an unjust war? A debate on the Iraq war and reflections on Libya*

This article is based on a debate held on 22 March 2011 at Chatham House on ‘Was Iraq an unjust war?’ David Fisher argues that the war fully failed to meet any of the just war criteria. The war was undertaken to disarm Iraq of its WMD but the evidence that it had such weapons was inadequate. There were concerns about the justice of the cause, reinforced by doubts that those initiating military action avowedly on behalf of the UN had the requisite competent authority to do so, given the absence of any international consensus in favour of military action. The doubts were further reinforced by concern that action was being undertaken too soon and not as a last resort. Crucially, no adequate assessment was undertaken before military action was authorized to seek to ensure that the harm likely to result would not outweigh the good achieved. The individual failures mutually reinforced each other, so building up cumulatively to support the conclusion that the war was undertaken without sufficient just cause and without adequate planning how to achieve a just outcome following military action to impose regime change. It thus failed the two key tests that have to be met before a war can be justly undertaken, designed to ensure that military action is only initiated if more good than harm is likely to result. By contrast, current coalition operations in Libya are, so far, just. This is a humanitarian operation undertaken to halt a humanitarian catastrophe that is taking place, with wide international support, including authorization by the UN Security Council. Nigel Biggar argues that the fact that the invasion and occupation of Iraq suffered from grave errors, some of them morally culpable, does not yet establish its overall injustice. All wars are morally flawed, even just ones. Further, even if the invasion were illegal, that need not make it immoral. The authority of moral law trumps that of international law, and where the politics of the Security Council prevent the UN from enforcing the law, unauthorized enforcement could be morally justified. Further still, massive civilian casualties do not by themselves make an unjust war. The decisive considerations are those of just cause, last resort and right intention. Proportionality is not among them, because estimating it is far too uncertain. The persistently atrocious nature of the Saddam Hussein regime satisfies just cause; evidence of collapsing containment grounds last resort; and the Coalition's costly correction of early errors proved the seriousness of its good intentions. In sum the invasion and occupation of Iraq was, despite grave errors, justified. Regarding Libya, Biggar notes the recurrence of conflict over the interpretation of international law. He wonders how those who distinguish sharply between protecting civilians and regime change imagine that dissident civilians are to be ‘kept’ safe while Qadhafi remains in power. Against those who clamour for a clear exit‐strategy, he counsels agility, while urging sensitivity to the limits of our power. What was right to begin may become imprudent to continue.     

Re‐writing the ‘book of blots’: Critical reflections on histories of technological ‘failure’

Abstract

Although an interest in technological ‘failure’ has become prominent in recent history of technology, historians have not always clearly articulated the presuppositions of attributing ‘failure’ to technology. This paper undertakes a critical examination of two main historiographies of ‘failure’: ‘failure’ as categorization of ‘pathological’ technologies that clearly demarcates them from ‘successes’, and ‘failure’ as a mundane and inevitable prerequisite of subsequent ‘success’. To reconcile these divergent analyses, this paper argues that historians should not treat ‘failure’ as residing in the technology itself. It is rather a matter of imputation according to socially‐embedded criteria of what constitutes success and failure. Accordingly judgements of ‘failure’ are prone to interpretive flexibility in a manner that is not necessarily settled by any process of ‘closure.’ I will argue that any ‘failure’ of technologies should be located in the socio‐technical relations of usage, especially in the expectations, skills and resources of human users. The moral irony of attributing responsibility for ‘failure’ to technologies themselves rather than to humans users will thereby be highlighted.     

The Little Nyonya and Singapore’s national self: reflections on aesthetics,ethnicity and postcolonial state formation

Singapore’s postcolonial state formation process has combined the appeal/distress of a multiracial society with the nationalistic pride of economic development. In recent years, the city-state has witnessed a revival of Peranakan culture and history, referring to the descendants of early Chinese immigrants who integrated into Indigenous societies before becoming prized mediators for British colonisers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We question how these references are strategically deployed as part of the process of postcolonial state formation and how their aesthetic representations support public discussions and debates about what defines contemporary (Chinese) Singaporean identity. By examining Peranakan representations in the television series The Little Nyonya from a Deleuzian perspective, it will be argued that Peranakan history and culture are mobilised to de-territorialise previous meanings of national ethnic markers, specifically Chineseness, and to re-territorialise a local sense of Indigeneity. In reaction to concerns over Mainlander identity, representations of Peranakan culture and history in The Little Nyonya support the indigenisation of a specific Chinese identity that is accessible to all Singaporeans, offering an aesthetic framework in which the ongoing process of negotiating between Singapore’s national self and other unfolds.     

A proxy geopolitics of poppies,peasants, and national sovereignty: Turkey’s rhetorical resistance to America’s war on drugs

Nixon's self-declared war on drugs has been underway for over five decades. Not all aspects are well known, and many voices of those touched by the campaign were and remain unheard. In the early 1970s, the Turkish republic faced a political crisis. The military installed a post-coup leadership that acquiesced to longstanding American demands to halt all cultivation of the opium poppy. This was the first sustained battle in Nixon's war, and it had socio-economically devastating consequences for Anatolian peasants who had for generations farmed the crop for licit and illicit markets. To many Turkish citizens, the ban was the result of a new stage in Western imperialism and a direct consequence of their own leaders' failure to protect the country's rural poor majority, on the one hand, and their surrender of national sovereignty, on the other hand. Farmers' voices were rarely heard on this issue, apart from brief quotes in newspapers and in domestic and foreign governmental studies, but their plight attracted sustained popular attention due in part to the proxy geopolitics articulated on their behalf. Before the recently disenfranchised parliament that did not permit sustained discussion or debate of the poppy question, MPs nonetheless rendered impromptu testimonies protesting the ban, its impacts on farmers, the suppression of democracy, and nation's loss of sovereignty. Through an analysis of Turkey's parliamentary record and other contemporary sources, I approach this crucial episode in the histories of intoxicants and the war on drugs. In so doing, I demonstrate the potential and seeming success of proxy geopolitics echoed on behalf of a marginalized people and why engagement with such sources is essential in the wider practice of critical geopolitics.     

Taking center stage: Early modern women’s tragedies on the contemporary stage

Abstract

From wife murder to cloak-and-dagger plays, female bodies, minds, and financial status are, for the most part, disempowered and abused by male protagonists with societal compliance. Since the 2000s, coinciding with the approval of the Ley Integral contra la Violencia de Género (2004), a wave of stage adaptations emerged in Spain that questioned the marginalization of women characters in the comedia. I claim that this trend in performance has become a sociocultural phenomenon that uses the symbolic capital of the comedia to raise awareness of women’s misrepresentation and gender violence and inequality.     

Echoes of tradition: Liang Qichao’s reflections on the Italian Risorgimento and the construction of Chinese nationalism

This paper examines how Liang Qichao viewed the Italian Risorgimento, with the focus on his reflections on its meanings in the historical contexts of Chinese politics and tradition. It will identify and analyze the many forces and ideas that influenced Liang as he formulated his reflections, especially the timing around the turn of the twentieth century and the discourses of nascent nationalism in Japan where Liang lived in exile. The way Liang created – or recreated – the Italian story demonstrated that the Chinese had finally begun to realize a crucial point about the building of a modern nation. While Britain, the United States, and France were able to build a modern nation by starting from the grass roots and more closely observing Enlightenment ideals, China did not have the luxury or the time to follow the same path. In the age of high imperialism, the weak would simply be weeded out quickly. Without national salvation, there could be no modern nation. National salvation, as exemplified by the Risorgimento, involved maintaining and glorifying the country’s own traditions and core values, which would in turn unify different social segments. Liang and his fellow reformers realized the importance of having simultaneously a national cause, a single political party, and a single leader, instead of having to take separate steps toward awakening. Liang’s awakening paved the way for the unfolding of the great Chinese revolutions of the twentieth century, led first by the Kuomintang and then by the Communists. Following Liang’s track of thinking, they both strived to build – or rebuild – a political centralism.     

Australia’s war in Vietnam: debate without end

Australia’s commitment in Vietnam can be interpreted as a small ally drawing its superpower partner into war for its own ends. Two studies by eminent Australian authors throw light on the role of human agency, and in so doing bring Australian historiography of the war closer to the trend in the United States. Peter Edwards’s history just about describes Vietnam as ‘Menzies War’. However, he finds no new sources on Menzies’s mindset, and diminishes the roles of his foreign ministers, Garfield Barwick and Paul Hasluck. The late Geoffrey Bolton’s intimate biography of Hasluck shows him as an active minister and also that his private papers are thin on Vietnam, the part of his distinguished career on which he never wrote. The Cabinet meeting of 17 December 1964 reveals much more about Australian decision-making on going to war than can be gleaned from Edwards’s cursory treatment and Bolton’s second-hand account. Barwick’s different approach, and even Hasluck’s last-minute caution, show Australia had a choice. Barwick, if he had remained Foreign Minister, might have kept Australia out of the Vietnam war, so freeing it to continue to play a leading regional political role.     

Construction of Yan Fu’s view on social history and the turning of modern history

The construction of Yan Fu’s view on social history has combined the indigenization of Western historiography and the modernization of traditional Chinese historiography, which reflects the characteristic of a change towards modern historiography. The academic sources of Yan’s view on social history include some Western thoughts such as Herbert Spencer’s social Darwinist theory, Edward Jenks’ patriarchal clan system theory, John Seeley’s political historiography, etc.; and also many indigenous sources such as Yang Zhu’s self benefit, Mozi’s selfless love, Buddhist views on mood, etc.